Common Sense

Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?

There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…

One last question. A small, final question a friend has asked: Osho, can the capacity for egolessness be available to an ordinary person too?

From his question it sounds as if, poor fellow, how could an ordinary person ever get it? Whereas the truth is: for the extraordinary it is very difficult. Because “extraordinary” itself means egoistic. It can be attained only by the ordinary. But not by the merely ordinary—by the extraordinarily ordinary, one who is ordinary in an extraordinary way. Whom do I call “ordinary-ordinary”? I call him ordinary-ordinary whom everyone else calls ordinary, but who himself does not accept he is ordinary. And whom do I call extraordinarily ordinary? The one whom the world may call extraordinary, yet he knows himself to be ordinary. For twelve years I traveled across the country. I met hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds came to me and said, “What you say—how will it ever be understood by the ordinary man?” I asked them, “Do you understand it?” They said, “I do understand; but how…

Osho, the path of simplicity is the second one. What is it?

The first path is to try to be simple, to make an effort, to practice it. Cultivated simplicity is always false. Because to practice, by its very meaning, is to practice against your own mind; otherwise, what is the practice against? If being naked is blissful for me, I will not call it practice. If wearing clothes is blissful for me and then I start practicing being naked, will nakedness be a “practice”? And if being naked is simply blissful—if wearing clothes never gave me the joy that comes from being naked—then no one would call it a practice. It is my joy. We practice only that which is contrary to us; practice means repression. Practice is inevitably repression. And wherever effort is required, against whom is that effort made—against oneself? No effort made against oneself can ever win. How could it win? Who would win? How can I win…

Osho, you always praise a simple, innocent consciousness. What is this simplicity, this innocence?

The man said, “Then send me to the Indian one; I don’t want the German.” That difference was enough. The Germans refined it further—they read your scriptures and perfected them. German intellect knows how to refine things, arrange them, run everything by the clock. Even in the ashram I have given the electricity work to Haridas—a German sannyasin. However many times Pune’s electricity fails, the ashram’s does not. Let Pune fail, but not the ashram. Haridas takes great care; he has arranged everything—automatic generators: the moment the power fails, they kick in; you can’t even tell there was a failure. Where has this been learned? This much evil in the world—your saints had already arranged for it in the scriptures. Hell for others, heaven for themselves. These are not marks of simple-hearted people. A simple person—why would he think of hell and heaven? He has no such notions, no such…